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NOTE: Since I'm doing more than one 100-theme challenge, I'm going to use three-letter tags along with their numbers to help keep their titles distinct. This one will be the "KTS" challenge, short for "kitsune," since the list's creator is screen-named "Kitsunechann." fav.me/d5ik75b (I'll be using this challenge for canon characters, and only in a few instances will they actually have OCs/FCs alongside them, despite the title... so I hope the list's creator doesn't mind. 
) I'll be using the KTS challenge for all of my fandoms besides Star Trek (which gets its own challenge). Today's featured fandom is...
Vocaloid. 
~~~
003. Winter
Rin sniffled in her bed. It was no fun having a computer virus on the first snow day of the year. The little android blew her nose miserably, peeking up to her bedroom window. The white flakes were falling all around, so enticingly, and there was her brother Len, laughing and playing with Kaito in the thick-blanketed yard, building a snowman.
Rin, Len, and all their other friends were androids, "Vocaloids" built to sing and dance, but were still functional in most other "human" areas too. They could laugh and play and feel comfort and pain, they could hug and kiss and be boastful or timid, they could shop and cook and sleep and do most anything else normal humanoids could do--including get sick, as Rin had found out, though sometimes they referred to their coughs and fevers as "glitches," since they were indeed apparently caused by little twinges in their circuits. They'd pass in a few days, if minor, just like any human viruses. But it made Rin sad and grumpy that hers had made her miss playing outside in the snow today. She pouted and watched her brother--brothers, really--through the windowpane again, and sucked on one of the oranges she'd gotten from the bowl on the kotatsu. (They were her favorite fruit, and she needed the vitamin C today, anyway.)
Above all, the Vocaloids needed family like most other beings did, and they found it in each other. Their actual ages were unclear to them--judging by the numbered tattoos on their shoulders, Meiko and Kaito were the prototypes, "00's," and Miku was the first perfected model, "01." Rin and Len must have been made right after her--they shared the stamp "02," and indeed appeared to be "twins," cast from the same mold, just different genders. Yet Luka, "03," was older than them in every area they could actually see and feel--she was taller, deeper-voiced, and more adult-faced, and acted it, too, the calm and composed maternal figure of the whole gang. They must all have been programmed to just "be" certain human ages, the Vocaloids reasoned. Rin quite liked being the "youngest" Vocaloid (along with her twin brother), actually, a little girl who could seem anywhere from eight to fourteen--well, except whenever her "older" siblings tried to boss her around. Then she'd always experiment with hard rock and wear dark metal-studded suits and try to "assert herself," but those phases never lasted long. She was usually gentle (if occasionally moody) and liked being taken care of by Kaito, Meiko, and Luka. And Gakupo now, too. He and his apparent sister ("younger" sister, though, not twin), Gumi, were the newest members of the Vocaloids' makeshift family, and didn't even have production stamps on them. No one really knew when they had been made, but their shiny new features and smooth, realistic voices suggested they were indeed the newest androids of the lot. Yet Gumi seemed a slightly older teen than Rin's friend Miku, and Gakupo seemed older than any of them, a quiet, serious soul who apparently fancied himself a samurai, with a rich, deep voice, and the face and frame of someone in his late twenties. He seemed quite wise, despite probably being created the latest of the whole family. But it took a while to get to know him. He only opened up to each of them after a while. Rin hoped he'd talk to her more soon. She liked having "big siblings." She already had her "oneechan"s Luka and Meiko, and her "oniichan" Kaito. She hoped Gakupo would be an "oniichan" too.
She was mildly startled just then to see Gakupo peek through her door. "Rin? Are you feeling any better today?" he pronounced slowly, a gentle smile on his face.
Rin straighted up in her pajamas, leaning back on her pillow. "Mmm... a little," she replied. "What's that?" she piped up meekly, noticing a small sack rustling against Gakupo's billowy kimono-style jacket.
The violet-haired android's smile broadened, though still very gently, and he walked over to the smallest Vocaloid's bed, kneeling on the ground to show her what he'd brought.
"I went to the market today and saw these on a table out in front of a knick-knack hut," Gakupo explained, lifting the small ornament box out of the bag. It was already printed with what it contained, but he handed it to Rin for her to open anyway.
Rin lifted the cardboard lid and cooed. "Ooooh, a little globe! With a little snow-neko inside! What's it do?"
The bigger Vocaloid smiled softly again, and took the knick-knack in his elegant hands, shaking it. It was a little glass ball with water inside, attached to a metal stand so it could be placed on a shelf. Inside was a cute cat-shaped snowman, and lots of little flakes of fake white snow. In the few months he and Gumi had been with their new family, Gakupo had already learned that Rin was fond of cats, or "neko"s. And like almost all children, she apparently loved snow, so Gakupo reasoned this little virus was of course providing a big disappointment to her.
"It's a snow globe, see?" the samurai-like Vocaloid explained further, holding the knick-knack so that Rin could see the little flakes swirling and falling around in it like a miniature snowstorm. "Since you can't go outside and play in the snow today, imouto, I thought I'd bring a little snow home to you."
Tears threatened to prickle in Rin's big blue eyes. "Oh, Gakky!" she cried happily, hugging the gift to her tiny chest. He'd cheered her up well and proper, and he'd even called her "imouto," "little sister" now. "Thank you, oniichan," Rin whispered, and would have hugged the tall Vocaloid, too, if she hadn't been contagious with her cold virus.
Gakupo gave one of his rare chuckles, and patted Rin's blond head affectionately. "You're very welcome, little one."
~~~
At first I was planning a little scene of Rin and Miku walking home in the snow and composing a song together, but then I found a Gakupo (Gackpoid) song on iTunes called "Snow," from an album called "Present for You," and this tumbled out. I have no idea what the actual words are (this is another Vocaloid song Google apparently doesn't have the translated/translatable lyrics for... 
), but the English titles made me think of Gakupo giving someone a gift which was somehow connected with snow, which was perfect for this challenge prompt. I picked Rin for the recipient because she and Len are the youngest Vocaloids (at least of the "main eight" I know much about--them, Miku, Kaito, Meiko, Luka, Gumi, and Gakupo), and I like to imagine the older Vocaloids (or "programmed to be older," I suppose I should say) being all protective and paternal/maternal to them. 
Also, I hope I didn't mangle any "Vocaloid canon" in this little story I made up--I get the impression that artists (both of the musical and the visual variety, and written as well) are pretty much free to interpret all these characters as they choose, since they're really just anime avatars for voicebanks. So I've begun to form a head-canon where they're "orphaned androids" who don't have any official owners, but were obviously programmed for musical talent, and so have formed a band together to make any money they might need, and all live together in a big apartment-style house, each with their own room. I haven't decided yet "who I ship with whom," if any, and at any rate, I imagine all the "non-paired" Vocaloids treating each other as siblings.
I hope my head-canon here works... if any more experienced Vocaloid fans know of some official canon (not just unofficial "fanon") that I don't yet, then please feel free to point out any errors to me. 
